Argentine leader undergoes surgery to remove cancerous thyroid gland

Cristina Fernandez, 58, was found to have papillary thyroid carcinoma shortly after beginning her second four-year term as Argentina's leader, doctors said. Preoperative tests suggested it had not spread beyond her thyroid, so the condition should be curable without chemotherapy, they added.

Vice President Amado Boudou was put in charge shortly before the operation, and will remain as the country's constitutional leader for 20 more days while Fernandez takes medical leave, the presidency said.

Early Wednesday, Fernandez flew by helicopter from the presidential residence in Olivos to the Hospital Austral in suburban Pilar, north of the capital. She went under general anesthesia several hours later for the operation led by Dr. Pedro Saco, a veteran Argentine oncologist who specializes in cancers of the head and neck.

Experts say thyroid removals are about as routine as cancer surgeries can be, although the process is not without risk: surgeons must take care not to damage a nearby nerve that guides the vocal cords, or to remove the adjacent parathyroids, which regulate the body's calcium supply.

Patients should generally take care to relax their necks after surgery. Temporary hoarseness is common, and in rare cases, permanent voice changes can result. Patients also must swallow radioactive iodide for several days to destroy any cancerous remnants and provide for clearer images to detect any additional cancer, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

After surgery, patients take medicine — levothyroxine sodium — for the rest of their lives to replace a hormone that the thyroid glands produce. Blood tests every six to 12 months to measure thyroid levels also are recommended.

Fernandez is only the latest sitting South American leader to be diagnosed with cancer. Presidents Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Dilma Rousseff of Brazil all have undergone treatments recently.

Supporters waited anxiously outside the hospital for word on the surgery's results, waving flags, carrying handmade signs that said "Be Strong Cristina" and building small shrines to the populist leader, who won reelection with a 54 percent landslide in October. Many carried pictures showing Fernandez and her late husband, former President Nestor Kirchner, who died of a heart attack in 2010.

Boudou, her former economy minister, is expected to work closely with Fernandez's other Cabinet members while she recuperates at her home in Calafate, in far-southern Argentina, and make no major policy changes. Argentina all but shuts down anyway for the summer holidays in January and February, so her diagnosis and surgery came at a relatively calm time.